In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for believers to learn how to overcome the devil's influence in their lives. He highlights the lack of spiritual understanding and the inability to bind the devil in the church today. The preacher shares a personal testimony of witnessing the power of prayer and faith in action, leading to the salvation of many individuals. He references Mark 11, where Jesus teaches about the power of speaking to mountains and having faith without doubt. The sermon concludes with a call to trust in God's word and to actively participate in spreading the gospel.

...Bibles, turn with me please to the 11th chapter of the book of Mark, and we're going to read several verses of Scripture beginning in the 11th chapter with the 20th verse, Mark 11, 20. These verses of Scripture introduce us to a phase of the faith life that I believe the Lord would have me to share with you today. I trust that you will pray as we go along and the message that the Lord would quicken your heart to the truth and and allow me the liberty to say to you what I need to say in order to help you in your own particular case. Beginning at the 20th verse of the 11th chapter of the book of Mark, "...in the morning as they passed by they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. Peter calling to remembrance and said unto him, Master behold the fig tree which thou cursed is withered away. Jesus answered and said unto them, have faith in God. For verily I say unto you that whatsoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass. He shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, what things soever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and ye shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive. If ye have ought against any, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you your trespasses." This particular portion of scripture relates us to a type of prayer that Norman Grubb calls the summit of the faith life. It's referred to by some as the spoken word of faith. The spoken word of faith is a very unique part of the faith life and we can see it all the way through the Old Testament and through the New Testament. The Bible lets us get a glimpse of this in Romans 8-10 if you'd like to see what part confession has to do with this matter of the life of faith. But you have to go a little farther than Romans 10-8 to see it all and I'm not sure that you could ever get it all. But as you look through the Old Testament, you can see some occasions where the spoken word of faith entered in to what was going on. For instance, Abraham made this statement. He said, And I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. In other words, he just declared with his voice what he believed in his heart. And of course, you know what happened. God miraculously worked. Moses stood up and said, Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. For the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. And of course, that was quite an experience there at the Red Sea. When Moses declared his faith, the spoken word of faith, and so you can go into the New Testament and as you get there, you see the Lord Jesus expressing the word of faith. Of course, he was the word expressed himself in the very fact of his life. But he constantly used the word of faith to accomplish the Father's end. For instance, he said, Peace be still. Arise and walk. And constantly he was making these statements and the people that saw him just referred to the fact that he was a man of authority. And he spoke as a man of authority. Because as he spoke, things happened. And it happened in accordance to how he spoke. And so we see the Lord Jesus using the spoken word of faith constantly in his life and his ministry. And so today I want to talk to you about the spoken word of faith. And to approach this, I want to talk to you first about the different kinds of faith and prayer that's mentioned in the Bible. To give you a list of the different types of prayer, and I'm not saying that the types I'm going to mention here are all-inclusive. I'm not sure that this would be an all-inclusive grouping, but I know that there's enough here to give us some understanding of what we're wanting to get to. And that is this. We understand that there is the prayer of confession. A child of God never gets so mature that they do not need to confess. I do know some people who feel like that they are so sanctified holy that they do not need to confess. But as far as I can find, the word of God teaches that not a person will ever get to the place that they do not need to use this form of prayer, the prayer of confession. And then not only is prayer confession, but we find that prayer is petition. We petition God. We ask God for things. And I don't know that we ever get to the place that we do not ask God for things. But I know that you're familiar with this type of prayer, at least. And then we have intercession. And I'm not giving them in the sequence of their importance, but intercession is quite a unique form of prayer. I believe you'd have to go to the life of Jesus to find a real, real genuine definition of an intercessor. A lot of times people have the idea that an intercessor is one that prays by confession and by petition. But an intercessor is one who is able to pick up on the needs somewhere along the way of some individual or some group of individuals. And that person, the intercessor, takes upon himself the burden and bears the burden and sets the other folk free. And of course, Jesus Christ is a great example. In fact, the real example to me of an intercessor. Jesus was to us, will be to us, a lot of things. But he certainly represents the life of an intercessor. He took your sins, he took my sins upon himself, all of our sorrow and all of our pain upon himself, took it into his own body, and then turned around and gave us all that he had that was of God, made it free and available to us. Now, Jesus was an intercessor. An intercessor differs from a prayer warrior. A prayer warrior can pray over a matter and leave it alone. But an intercessor is a person that must have an answer. And they must have an answer and will have an answer and secure God's answer if it takes their life. Now, friends, there are not many intercessors. There are prayer warriors, but not many intercessors. Another type of prayer is praise. And that's a type of prayer. It's adoration, thanksgiving, praise. And of course, this is getting into some of the higher forms of prayer, of course, intercession and praise. I do not know where praise fits in in its sequence of importance. I don't know that you could list one more important, one type of prayer more important than the other, but there is praise. I suppose I have run into a lot of people that had a lot to say about praise, but my wife has taught me more about praise than any person alive. And I've met a lot of people. But one time, my wife called me and she said, the doctors have diagnosed my condition as cancer. Now, we knew she had knots all over her body and all these different glands in her body. And she'd been going to the doctor and he'd been giving her a thorough examination for weeks, actually. And while I was out of town, she got the final information and it was cancer, he said. She came home, called me, and she said, it's cancer. Amazing thing about it, she'd just read an article, you know, where they were finding this type of cancer in a lot of people. No, man, it just all fit perfect. She had cancer. I was in Oklahoma City, so I asked her if she wanted me to come home. I think I maybe said, well, I'll just quit the meeting and come home. She said, well, you'll be home Monday. Just stay with a meeting because things won't happen too quick, I'm sure. She said, you just stay there. And it was good because I was able to stay along and do a lot of praying. And when I got home on Monday, she picked me up at the airport. Well, I'll tell you, I didn't meet a woman that was facing death. I met a woman that had so much life and she was so excited in Jesus that I was just overcome. And I'm sure I didn't know how to respond to her. I said, well, what's happened to you? She said, Jesus has met my need. I said, has he healed you? She said, oh, I don't know whether he's healed me or not, but he's met my need. And I mean, she was so happy about it. I couldn't get over it. I said, what do you mean to tell me you don't have it? She said, I don't know whether I have it or not. She says, Jesus has met my need. So I finally got out of her. What happened? We went back to the story and, you know, where it started with her about the Lord. And here's what happened. She was so depressed and so overcome physically. One morning, I think it was Thursday morning, that she just had to make herself get out of bed. And she just rolled out of bed on her knees. And she said, I asked the Lord for this. And I asked the Lord for that and said, after a while, I just started thanking him for being Jesus and being my Lord. And she said, when I came to myself, we had this huge house with this big hall in it and said, when I came to myself, I was going up and down that hall with one hand in there, just praising God. She said, Jesus was so real that he was so precious that I just was praising him for what was going on. And then it didn't matter if I lived or died, whatever it was, it just didn't matter. And she said, that's it. And boy, she praised her way right through that circumstances. I mean, she is beautiful. So, you know, the Lord doesn't mind a test. You know, some people say, well, to have an examination is a lack of faith. The Lord doesn't mind being examined. When he's done something, he can stand the test. So we decided that she should go to a clinic there in Memphis, Tennessee, and have a thorough examination. And she went to see a Christian man, Dr. Sanders, that was alive at that time, a great man of God, a friend, and she went through his clinic. And he called her in and said, Marthy, he said, if you have ever had cancer, it's gone. He said, I don't know whether you ever had it or not. Said, who knows? But said, he said, it's not anymore. And you know, out of that experience through the years, she's taught me this business of praising God, this matter about praising the Lord. But that is a great form of prayer. That's a great form of prayer. Confession, petition, intercession, praise. And you might use some words, but basically, this is the type of prayer that we're talking about. But yet, there's the summit of prayer. There is the summit of the life of faith. And that is the prayer of faith. That's the prayer of faith. James talks about praying the prayer of faith. But this prayer of faith takes on a different form of expression. It takes on the form of the spoken word, like Abraham, like Moses, like Jesus, like even Paul. And so we get into the prayer of faith, a very interesting expression, a very unique part. Now, let me go back and pull in some material that's necessary to make this complete this morning. Back earlier in the messages, I gave you some laws of faith, some laws that govern, really, the life of faith. And one law was the law of relationship. Another law was the law of fellowship. Another law was the law of lordship. And another law was the law of believing, believing that you might receive. The technique of faith, I think we made reference to at least the technique of faith. But it's the law of believing in order to receive. And then there is the law of warfare. Now, go back to Romans, Romans 10. And in Romans 10, Romans 10 tells us what we believe in our hearts, we do what? We confess with our mouth. And that confession, beloved, now I want you to get this, because this is so important. That confession is not a commandment. That confession is a spontaneous expression. And you need to, we need to see this. That confession, when we believe with our hearts, we confess with our mouth what we believe. And it's a spontaneous confession. I can tell what you believe by what you say. Right? And this confession brings us into warfare. Because our confession will involve God, man, and Satan. Someone has said that if your prayers doesn't upset the devil, they just haven't been prayers at all. Right? And your prayers go in three distinct directions. Your prayers can, your prayers affect God and yourself, and the devil, or man. You might say man rather than yourself. If you divided man from yourself, you would say four dimensions, but I think it's clear enough to keep it on three dimensions. Now, this prayer of faith is saying what God says. And that's what the Lord's talking about in Mark 11, starting with that 20th verse. The Lord Jesus, when he dealt with that fig tree, you know what? He literally spoke to that fig tree. Didn't he? And he goes on, and he says, now listen, if you say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and doubt not, you shall have whatsoever you want. Say it. Now this is an interesting truth, because it's basically interesting to most Baptists, because most of us Baptists never get this far. To be just very honest with you, we very seldom ever get out of the confession and the petition. And the reason is, is that we never grow up. Right? Most of the folk we deal with are like my children. When they were real, real young, they always just stood around asking me for things. But I've noticed as they got more mature, they quit asking and started agreeing with me and getting in on what I was doing. And when they did, they got in on what I was getting. Amen. And they really did. It's real interesting. Now I want you to turn to the book of Ephesians, the sixth chapter, because I want to talk to you for a few moments about something of the condition that a child of God must get in if he's going to pray the prayer of faith and live in the realm of the spoken word of faith. Ephesians 6. Let's start with the tenth verse. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Therefore take unto you the whole honor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins wrought about with truth. And I'll stop right here and just want you to make a special notation that the truth is mentioned right here. And having on the best plate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, take the shield of faithful, if you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Take the helmet of salvation, now watch this, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. You notice the word of God is mentioned again here? That's twice the word of God is mentioned in this portion of scripture. And it's very significant that this is so. Eighteenth verse. Praying always with all prayer, and the best I can understand, this means all kinds of prayer. All kinds of prayer. And I've listed you several different kinds of prayer. And watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Now, this is what I want you to see. That if we are going, if we are going to enter into the prayer of faith, the spoken word of faith, enter into that summit experience of the life of faith, as being co-laborers with the Lord, we are going to have to learn to reign with the Lord. We're going to have to learn to reign with the Lord. In other words, we're going to have to get into his positional truth for us on an experiential basis. Now, judicially, historically, positionally, friends, this thing is all locked up and finished. But I want you to know on a practical, everyday, down-to-earth basis, you as a child of God must discover your position in Christ Jesus, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and enter in experientially to the truth that is already so about you. And you've got to get into that. And he says here, be strong. Tenth verse says, finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, be strong in the Lord, in the power of his might. That's some preparation that a child of God needs to get into. And that preparation is the child of God needs to learn how to put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs to learn how to put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. I think the twelfth chapter, the first two verses, indicates to us the procedure of a child of God putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, what do you mean? He said, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, whole and acceptable, and so on. And I like what the New American Standard Translation says. It says, which is your worshipful service. And here again, we come right back to that very important point that I've dealt with many times in this series of talks, and that is the place of worship in the life of the believer. The life of the believer, my dear friends, must get to worship. They must worship while they're there. And not only that, but all of the life expression of the believer must be a result of God-initiated activity while a man of God is in worship. We need to learn how to worship. And in worship, we are able to be transformed according to the Word of God. We're to be transformed. And he goes on and tells us how to be transformed. He said you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now friends, how is a person's mind renewed? How is a person's mind renewed? How are they brought to that place to where their minds are renewed and they are transformed, putting you on the Lord Jesus Christ on a practical level? Naturally, there is the truth to be believed. But you have a difficulty believing the truth. So many times you have to have your mind renewed. And your mind gets renewed as the Spirit of God takes you back to the Word of God that's been given to you personally in given situations for your life. And the Lord reminds you of those things. I remember an illustration out of my own experience here a few years ago where a plane had been sent for my wife and the little boy and myself. And we were to go and spend the weekend with Corrie Ten Boone. And when the plane got there, I looked out, you know, and the weather was quite bad. And in the fact that I had flown a lot and one time had my own airplane and a few things like that, you know, I could read the weather fairly well. And we got to the airport and my eyes, of course, said it looked all right. But down inside my heart things weren't right. But I went ahead and listened to what I could see rather than what the Lord was saying in my heart. We flew for about 45 minutes and all at once we started flying out over the Gulf of Mexico and we just started heading south instead of west. And it began to get tough. And the pilot, the two pilots that we had, they were real great fellows. But, and they were both Christians, but I'll tell you what, things begin to get tough. And my wife, she had already got a little nervous. And I was way, way back in the airplane. I called it resting, but I wasn't resting. And I had, of course, just got up out of the bed and my body was beginning to shake physically. You know, I was beginning to shake and, and my body was an expression of what was going on in my spirit, my whole person. And I looked up and saw my little boy praying. I could see his lips moving and he was praying. And I knew if that child had gotten afraid, I knew then it's time to do something. And, and boy, things begin to get tough. And I said, Lord, I'm in trouble. And I, my whole person, my whole person is given an expression of fear and doubt. And I need to be transformed. And the Lord immediately brought back that promise he gave to me when I was dying. Thou shalt see thy children's children. I said, don't you think that one will do for now? And boy, the moment I got that verse, the moment God gave me that verse, I started meditating on that verse. Thou shalt see thy children's children. And all at once, my whole person was transformed because my life was renewed because of the fact that God brought the truth back to me. And I think about Jehoshaphat. I think about him getting his mind renewed. I was amazed. And I jotted these things down. When Jehoshaphat, in the 20th chapter of the book of 2 Chronicles, was faced with three enemies, man, he was faced with those enemies. And he went out and sought the Lord. And I noticed what happened to him. He started praying to the Lord. And the first thing he did, he started reminding God of his power, of his faithfulness, of his investment, of his testimony, of his promises, of his enemies, of their weakness and their position. And by the time he got through reminding God of all these facts, I want you to know he was so transformed that God was able to speak to him and let him know what he wanted him to do. What I'm sharing, saying here now at this point, is this. If we're going to enter in to the matter of praying, the prayer of faith, getting to that summit, speaking the word of faith, we are going to have to learn how to be established in the Lord and be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We're going to have to come to that place where there's such surrender on our part, that friends, it's given way to worship, where the Lord's Spirit can bring back to us the truth of God, letting us know the truth that God has given us and that God wants us to know at this point. You notice that I said the truth is mentioned twice in this portion of Scripture. And one reason I believe the truth is mentioned twice here is because in one place it's telling us of our position in Christ, our potential in Christ, what God has for us, what God's plan is, and so on. And in the other place it's mentioned the sword of the Spirit means God's quickened truth to us in a given situation. All through these messages I've been telling you the truth comes to us on two different levels and two different bases. There is truth that's referred to as, in the Greek, as logos, and then rhema. And you'll notice that this sword of the Spirit, the word of God, is that rhema truth, where the Spirit of God brings to your heart and mind at a given situation. And the truth is mentioned here because I believe it's not only the information laid down for man from God, the revelation of God to man, letting us know what belongs to us, where our position really is, and so on, giving us these facts. But the truth is the sword of the Spirit, and we'll come back to that in a few moments. But a child of God must learn how, must learn how to be strong in the strength of the Lord. They must learn how to have God as their strength, and they must learn how, secondly, they must learn how to put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, what do you mean? Well, he lists the fact that we must put on the whole armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation. And friends, you know as well as I know, the sword of the Spirit, you know that Jesus is all of that. Sure, he's all of that. And positionally, we're all in Christ today. But friends, that does not mean that we are not to personally put on the Lord Jesus Christ and stand righteous before man, holy before God, by a practical cleansing, by confessing our sins, making restitution to man, by getting a clear and clean conscience, and absolutely standing right with God and by faith putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we're able to get dressed properly and put on the Lord Jesus Christ in the strength of his power, then friends, we are ready to go to battle. When we're actually brought into our position in Christ Jesus, strength with the power, strengthened with the power of his might, called in himself, spiritually ruling and reigning in our position, our position being so all the time, but our practice not being so unless we are actually entering into it by faith, then when we get there, then friends, we as kings of God, we have the right, we have the right then to go to war. We have the right to go to battle. And I'll assure you, the devil pays no attention to you until you're there anyway. Right. Now when you get, when you get filled with the Spirit, controlled by the Spirit in the power of his might, clothed in the armor of God, and you step out to do business, I'll assure you, friend, you'll realize that the devil is a real foe. People that have trouble believing whether the devil is real or not are people who just are controlled by him. Right. Some people say they're just ignorant of him. They may be ignorant of him, but friends, he's got them so, he has them in such a way that they're all right. And that's just unreal because the devil is real. Now I don't have, or I'm not prepared today to go into that twelfth verse where we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. But I do want to say this about that verse. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. And we need to realize that our issues with man that are evil and ungodly and good that's not of God, we need to realize that these issues, these issues come from the devil. We really do. Because when we think that these issues come from man, we're going to deal with these issues on a flesh and blood basis, and we're not going to do anything in this world but hurt the opportunity of reaching and helping those people for the glory of God. Now I admit the devil uses flesh and blood, but the Bible says here that our battle, our issue is not with flesh and blood, but it's with the forces of hell that's behind all of that flesh and blood. Yes, sir. And that would help all of us today if we could realize that all these problems we have with these people are not flesh and blood. I think the sweetest illustration I've ever got a hold of about this was taken from the life of Dr. F.J. Hegel. When I read his book, Bone of His Bone, I went to visit him in Mexico. And of course I read everything he ever wrote. And he tells the story of being in a missionary's home and going down for breakfast. And the dad in that home gave a songbook to the oldest child, the son, to lead them in a song of worship. And the boy threw a fit, as we southerners would say, a wall-eyed fit. And he threw a fit. And this great man of God interpreted the situation beautifully. He didn't react in the flesh. But the next morning, when he got, the missionary, Dr. Hegel, when he got out of bed, he got on his knees. He knew from the study of the Word of God that family belonged to God. And that was God's family. Judicially, historically, positionally, that was so. And he knew that truth. That truth challenged him. He got out of bed and he got down on his knees. And I'm sure that he got everything straight between himself and the Lord. And then he said, Now Lord, the devil doesn't have any right on this territory. And he said, I want you to strengthen me that I can stand against the devil. And right there on his knees, he literally bound the devil out of that home. Bound the devil right there in his upper womb that morning. Told the devil he was powerless. Walked down to have breakfast. The dad handed the same boy a songbook, and the boy had revival that morning. Right? Now, what I'm saying to you, friend, is this. We need, we need to realize that this business of the devil is real. Right? And we need to realize that God can take the truth. And that God's people are to operate in the truth. But we're to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and we're to cooperate with God. We're to cooperate with God. We can put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. We just absolutely can't. And we're to put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ completely. And then when we do, we are able to get out there and recognize, like Dr. Hegel recognized, that this was not a flesh and blood issue. That this is, was a issue that the devil was behind. And he knew how to get to the source of the problem. And more than that, he knew how to deal with the source of the problem. And how many of us are running around here trying to deal with the issues on a humanistic level and handle these things by politics and all these other factors, when my dear friend, the real way to handle these issues is first of all, realize it's not flesh and blood, but the source is the devil and all of his demons. Right? And so I trust that you realize that your warfare, your battle is not flesh and blood. Now, to go into a detailed study of this verse would give you a good reason why, if you've ever prayed for Mr. Carter, you better pray for him. Because friends, I've got news for you. This little two-bit theology that some of these fellows believe in, and I want you to know, this little business of lay me down to sleep prayers, and get up on it with a top water testimony that God is real, brother, is no match to the demons of hell that's been relegated from hell just to pervert his life. I want you to know this portion of scripture, broke down phrase by phrase, will let you see that the strategy of the devil, my dear friends, there are princes and demons that are just out there waiting to get hold of the politician. Now, I'm just giving you a little taste of it. It's all right there in that verse. You don't have to go too far. The demonic forces are right out there just to get hold of preachers, just to get hold of other groups, just to keep you from praying. He does a pretty good job, doesn't he? Just to keep you ignorant. You don't think the devil has power. My dear friends, you need to look around, because he's kept us ignorant for almost 2,000 years. That's right, and I'm not so sure we're learning anything yet, but I mean, friend, it's getting about over. It's about time somebody learned something. But what I'm saying is this. We have an enemy, and that enemy is the devil. And I want to say this, that the devil is a necessary enemy. A lot of people have fallen for this modern philosophy that's going around, that's coming out of a movement that's very proper, and maybe a lot of you belong to it, that healing's in the atonement and all sicknesses of the devil. And my dear friends, only a short-sighted, blinded person to the truth of God would come up with such thinking as that. You say, boy, you're getting tough, preacher. No, anyone knows that if you're going to have the positive, you've got to have the negative. Amen. You say, why? Because the positive could not work if you didn't have the negative. And if you're going to have Jesus, you've got to have the devil. And when that philosophy is carried out to its ultimate end, you do away with the devil. And I guarantee you, God will never do away with the devil until you are prepared to rule and reign, and there's no need for the opposite, the negative to the positive. Amen. And I want you to know, my dear friends, all the negative that you see is nothing in this world but an indication that you need the positive, and you will not have the positive to any more degree than you have the negative. There will be no further grace than there's need for grace. It will not flow, except on any other measure than that. And I, and what I'm saying to you is this, the devil is a necessary evil. He's a necessary evil. Out there, allowed to be out there, to place, to bring opposition in your life so, my dear friends, you can respond to the Lord and learn how to be obedient to God. And of course, I'm getting on Brother Paul's message here because his book deals in this, Destined for the Throne. And this is right where his, the heart of his book, Destined for the Throne, deals, you know, and it brings it out right here. But this is exactly what I'm talking about. We get clothed in the armor of Jesus Christ and then we have the opposing forces of hell to oppose us. But it's good for us because it's that opposition that teaches us how to, to walk in the strength of the Lord, clothed in the armor of God, and then to become men and women, knowing how to take the sword of the Spirit and the all kinds of prayer, the two offensive weapons of the sword of the Spirit and prayer, and use them against the devil and learn to rule and reign right here in your own community. In your home, in your community, in your state, in your country, and in the world. Right? It has to be on the basis of that economy or the whole system is inconsistent. And I know it's not inconsistent, but we are, we're in need to learn how to get to that summit, the spoken word of faith. What's that spoken word of faith? My dear friends, it's saying what God says on the basis of the preparation and the experience that I have talked about. Now, I have had men to run out here and say, praise God, I got the victory. The Lord says, I have it all in the Lord. I've got it all. And they just go out there and speak a word that they have it. And I start looking around because when Jesus said, thank you for the bread and the fish, he had it. Amen. When he said, peace be still, the waves stop. And friends, when a man steps out and speaks the word of faith, says what God says, he's supposed to get results, just like God said. Right? Let me give you a couple of illustrations. First time I saw this, it's like scared me to death. You know, because about the only concept we had of demonic activity, we had picked up over the television back when it first came out, when A. A. Allen would get on the television and scream and cast out demons and all of that. And I'm confident that that was one of the works of Satan to try to pervert man's mind to excesses so some people wouldn't get to the real. Amen. And so boy, I never will forget it. This dear man, and he was a Southern Baptist boy that was the head of the Brotherhood group, which I'm trying to give you some classification here so you won't misjudge. So you'll listen to what I have to say. And he had never got off in, been off in excesses. He was a man that was so mightily used of God that one year he was used of God to bring 500 souls to Jesus. Now, let me tell you something. I'm not calm about running out door to door, which is all right. But this man so walked with God that as he walked with God, he would go. I remember one afternoon he went home, picked up the newspaper, started reading it and went to the sick list, the hospital list, you know, and he was reading it. And the Spirit of God said, that man's ready. He said to his wife, I'm going to hospital. I'll be back in a few moments. Went to the hospital, went to that man's room, knocked on the door. Man said, come in, walked in and the man had a Bible in the bed with him, weeping. And the man said, man, I've been praying that God send someone here to tell me about Jesus. You see, I'm talking about a man who walked with the Lord like that. And in one year led 500 people to Jesus. Now, I don't think I'm a man that could sit out and judge a fellow like that. Right. And he wasn't in any kind of successes. He came into the meeting I was in. It was in a small town where everyone knew everyone, but they had some great Christians in that church. And they prayed the best they knew, confession and petition. That's about all they knew to do. Now and then one or two got happy and, you know, would thank Jesus, praise the Lord a little bit for his goodness, but that's about all they knew. And so this fellow came to my meeting. We had six people walked out. Man, I got so happy over those six people walking out. He came by me after service and he said, he said, boy, I said, this place is bound up. I said, bound up, man, we had six people come tonight. He said, you know, your problem, manly, is that you are too willing to shout over what the devil lets happen rather than stay with God till you get what he wants to happen. I tell you, friends, I'm a little calm about that statement today, but that shook me. And I said, well, brother, you need to tell me a little bit. He said, you think God was really free to do everything he wanted to do here tonight? Well, when he started talking, I said, well, no, no, no. But you know, I am satisfied with that. He said, but don't be satisfied with less than what God wants. Oh, well, you know, I get ugly to people. I said, well, if you know so much about it, let's try it. You know, I thought I'd shut him up. And so he was ready. And I wasn't, I was pretty caustic with my words, I'm sure, but I really in my heart wanted to really see more victory. So we went in the prayer room and started praying. About 20 women and men were in another room praying. We went in and started praying. And listen, friends, God wasn't within a hundred miles, it seemed. And I kept hearing that man pray. And after a while I could tell he was entering into the strength of the Lord. You could tell that the Spirit of God was gripping his heart. And I heard him seek the Lord in behalf of a cleansed life. And I heard him say, Lord, I thank you for giving me the truth to stand on. And I'm not talking about screaming and hollering. I heard him say, you forces of hell, in the name of Jesus, you're powerless. The Word says so. And I agreed. I didn't know the depth of the experience that that man was entering in, but all I knew that when he told the devil he was powerless in that room to hinder us from praying, I knew in a moment I was in the presence of God. Boy, I'll tell you, as I got in the presence of God, I saw this man get under such agony of spirit that he literally told the devil he was powerless on that meeting. And he had no right in that meeting. And I, he took that position. And my, it took some hours. But the next morning when I got up to preach, he wasn't there. The man wasn't there. But I'll tell you, the Lord was there. And right in the middle of my message, right in the middle of my message, that man stood, said, can I get saved? A new delusion, a conviction, a delimitation truth of God was breaking out in the hearts of those people as I preached. A new level of spiritual experience. We don't know anything about this. Today we are on an intellectual and emotional level. We haven't got men and women who know how to bind the devil, that when preachers preach, the word can be revealed to the hearts of men, lost and saved. We know nothing about that level of spiritual walk. We haven't got out of the wilderness yet. Amen. And my dear friend, that night, six came that morning. That night, nineteen came. Phew, man, they were just, they were just coming. They'd knock you over. You didn't have to, come on, please. This is the last standard now. If you don't come this time, we're not going to have another one. And all that junk. Well, they were coming. One of them was a saint of God. They didn't know. They were just wringing their hands and said, my, how did you get here? How did you? We've been praying for you for 30 years. He was so casual about it. So excited that he met Jesus. You know what he said? This was so beautiful. He said, for all these years, I've been wanting to get free and get saved. But he said, you know, I got up this, for all these years, I've tried to get to church and tried to get this thing clear, but said something had me bound. But said, this morning I got up and said, I knew that I just had to get to church today. And I had to get things settled. And he said, the amazing thing about it, not one thing hindered me. He said, I just got here. Brother, I knew what was going on. I knew that I had run into a fellow that knew how to cooperate with God and secure God's end on a given situation. Sing unto this mountain, be thou removed. Whatsoever thou sayest, you see, you can say what God says. When God makes, when you have entered into the strength of the Lord, clothed in his armor, and the Spirit makes the truth real to you, as this is God's way, you can say what God says. And that spoken word of faith is entering into the prayer of faith, the warfare. You'll never have any victories until you have some war, right? And I trust today that God's Spirit will speak to your heart and teach you this truth. Because friend, until we learn this truth, we'll not be able to see the church move forward on a spiritual level. I have great hopes that we are headed for spiritual maturing, spiritual maturing in our day. And the greatest the greatest hope of my life is right now. And the reason part is because we have just gone through, and are going through some of it now, the greatest onslaught from Satan that I've known in my lifetime, as to trying to deceive us into a superficial, humanistic level, intellectual and emotional level of Christian experience, and telling people this is it. But I want you to know this is not it. When we get to it, we'll know Jesus Christ in his fullness, and we'll be able to discover how to walk with him. I believe this, that if God's people do not learn this truth, I believe the devil within the next few years will shut them down financially, and starve them out financially to where they'll have to compromise with the devil to raise their money. I see preachers that are going out of the ministry all the time, and the pressure is coming from finances. It's becoming a bread issue, a money issue. And of course, we need to have some discipline in this area. But friends, what God wants to get done, he has the money to get it done. But the devil will sit on the channel until we learn how to move him off. You could just go on and on in these different areas. Make this truth applicable. But I trust today that the Lord has spoke to your heart, allowed you to see yourself, and really encouraged you to get in on what God's doing. Would you bow your heads please? Father, we're grateful to you for this time. Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of sharing this truth with these people. In Jesus' name, amen.